AVERY (The Corbin Brothers Book 2) (34 page)

We shared a shower, laughing about our efforts to conserve water, our laughter fading to moans as we rubbed our hands over each other’s slippery bodies. Now that we were back together, I couldn’t get enough of him. I couldn’t resist the nearly magnetic pull I experienced whenever I was around him.

“Do we have time for a quickie?” Nate breathed in my ear, trailing kisses down my neck and across my collarbone.

“We’re going to make time,” I said. “Just means we have to take a taxi instead of the subway.”

“I like taxis,” Nate remarked, lifting me and pushing me against the shower wall, my legs wrapped around my waist. “Remember that wild ride to the Empire State Building, when you kept falling into my lap?”

“I think this wild ride is something I’m also going to cherish,” I said, gasping as he entered my already wet body.

As our bodies heated up, steam filled the bathroom. Our cries and pants, verbalizations of mutual pleasure, echoed off of the stone and mirrors. I fiddled with the knobs of the shower behind Nate’s back as he thrust upward into me. He yelped and then we both laughed as cold water cascaded down, refreshing our hot coupling.

“That feels good,” he said, shuddering.

He dipped his head down and licked my nipples, bringing me to the edge of orgasm and backing away, over and over until I was screaming for release. Nate obliged me, always aware of how far to push, what areas to tease until I climaxed. I kissed him as he joined me, a few more thrusts all he needed to achieve orgasm. Life was so good, just holding each other as the water ran down our bodies in the shower.

“I hate to cut this short,” I said, “but now we really have to hurry.”

We both threw on shorts and T-shirts—we now had matching “I Love N.Y.” numbers—and booked it for the elevator.

Nate didn’t realize what we were doing or what I had planned until we arrived at the harbor.

“I thought we already marked Lady Liberty off our list,” he said, his arm circling my waist.

“I thought you said we could never mark anything off the list.”

“Very true,” Nate said, “very true.”

I’d been sneaking around online for months to do what we were about to do.

“I hope she’s open this time,” he said as the ferry carried us out to Liberty Island.

“I think you will find her very open to us,” I said, smiling wickedly. “And if all goes well, I think you will find me very open later today.”

“A man can hope,” Nate said, nibbling my neck a little too erotically for a boat ride.

When we disembarked from the ferry and picked our way to the statue, I couldn’t hold in my surprise any longer.

“We’re going to the crown,” I said, clapping my hands excitedly.

“Really?” Nate exclaimed. “I’ve never been! Used to be you couldn’t go up there.”

“I know!” I said. “But they recently opened it and ten people can go at a time. I got us reservations.”

“Ooh, that takes a lot of planning,” Nate observed. “Are you sure I’m special enough for all that?”

“I was very sneaky,” I said. “And of course you’re special enough for this. I wouldn’t want to share this experience with anyone else in the world.”

The line was long, but we had each other. I never felt bored in Nate’s presence. Every moment was a mile a minute, talking about the scenery, about the people, about what our plans were later today, tomorrow, the next day. I learned so much about him in those first few months, about his past and his ambitions. He wanted to write another book. He wanted to do a lot of things.

We talked about the future with hope in our hearts. Nate was responding well to treatment, even though the doctor told us it was more to make him comfortable than it was to offer a real cure. We didn’t care. We’d take what we could get.

Finally, it was our turn to climb the stairs. They went winding up inside Lady Liberty’s body, making me dizzy just thinking about it. By the time we got to the very top, both of us were puffing, out of breath.

“I thought you were supposed to be in shape,” I teased Nate, barely able to get the words out.

“My office is too small for cardio,” he puffed, elbowing me in the ribs.

When we could stand up straight and appreciate it, the view from Lady Liberty’s crown was spectacular. Truly breathtaking. The city was gorgeous, sparkling in the morning sun.

“Look at how small the city looks from here,” Nate said, pointing out the skyline.

“Think of how big it is when we’re in it,” I told him. “Perspective is everything, isn’t it?”

“It definitely is,” Nate said, kissing me.

“A Message to Jasmine” had made the New York Times Bestsellers List. The money coming in was astronomical—and Nate was already well off to begin with from his real estate days. We agreed to invest the proceeds from his book into a fundraising company that helped cancer victims pay for their treatments, medications, and other necessities. I was named co-founder and CEO. Nate was the other co-founder, of course.

We wanted to stay up there on top of the world forever, looking at the beauty of New York City from Lady Liberty’s crown. Finally, the tour guide had to nearly push us back down the stairs to make way for more people to see what so few got to see anymore.

“What next?” Nate asked as we took the ferry back.

“Brunch, obviously,” I said, smiling. It had become one of my favorite meals, a gigantic segue from morning to afternoon marked by loads of food. Lacking food for so long on the streets made me appreciate fine meals so much more than a regular person.

After we’d filled our plates from a steaming buffet—I was actually carrying two plates, one piled high with fresh fruit and the other with pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs, country ham, and hash browns—we picked a table in the crowded eatery and started stuffing our faces. When I’d cleaned both my plates and went back to put away one more, I eased back from the table, completely satisfied.

Nate looked at me, visibly amused. “I’ve never met someone who could eat like you,” he said. “Where do you put all of it, anyway?”

I patted my full belly. “Right here.”

He shook his head. “You have a true talent for eating.”

We sat for several minutes of comfortable silence, sipping coffee and fruit juices while watching people file in and file out, fill their plates and empty them, smile, frown, talk, sit in silence. It was the ebb and flow of the city, the ever-changing faces of New York.

It was beautiful.

“What’s on your mind?” Nate asked. “I can practically see the wheels turning from here.”

“There’s so much I want to do,” I said, rubbing my hands together.

“Should we make a list?” Nate teased.

“Maybe,” I said seriously. “There’s kind of a lot.”

Nate got out his notebook and waited expectantly.

“I want to give back to the city,” I said. “I—I’ve been through a lot, I’ve seen a lot. I see needs that aren’t being filled in some way or another.”

“You have my attention,” Nate said, smiling.

“The charity’s one thing,” I said. “It’s good, but it could do so much more.”

“Go on.”

“We could start offering programs that would pay for housing and food for families who would need to travel to hospitals to be with their loved ones during treatment,” I said. “That could get really expensive without help—almost as expensive as the treatment itself.”

“That’s a really good idea,” Nate said, jotting it down. “We have a meeting tomorrow that we need to go to with some of the trustees. We can address it there.”

“There are lots of ways that we can raise money,” I said. “We could sell things, like shirts or bracelets. We could see if people would donate things for rummage sale events. We could host everything from galas to banquets, try to attract famous speakers as donors who would donate their time for the cause. We could have silent auctions, benefits, pair up with businesses and restaurants to sponsor days where they’d donate some of their profits to us.”

Nate’s pencil was flying on the pad of paper. He had to turn to a new page several times while I brainstormed aloud all my ideas for our cancer charity.

“These are all really great ideas for the charity,” Nate said. “This is going to keep us very busy, you know.”

“I know,” I said, “and I don’t want to stop there.”

“No?”

I shook my head emphatically. “No. When I was on the streets, I didn’t want to go to shelters because I found them depressing. What if we opened one that wasn’t, one that was welcoming to anyone who needed help?”

“What would you do to make something like that more welcoming?” Nate asked, cocking his head curiously.

“Offer private rooms, for one,” I said, “almost like a boarding house.” I thought about Mama’s nightclub, the way she’d offered rooms for all the girls.

“They can pay if they have the money, but most of them won’t,” I continued. “If they don’t, they can pay for their room and board by volunteering their time in the kitchen. They can cook and clean for the privilege of being able to stay in their room. They can stay for as long as it takes to get back on their feet.”

I thought about some of the shelters I’d seen. They’d seemed like prisons with their dormitories of bunk beds, the absolute loss of privacy, the necessity to share space with people who made you uncomfortable. I’d much preferred the company of dumpsters to spending time in shelters.

“Where are all these ideas coming from?” Nate asked, his hand continuing to scrawl my words across the page.

I smiled and shrugged. “Chalk it up to past experience,” I said. “The things that people think are helping right now can be done a lot better with just a few different practices.”

“What else you got?” Nate asked, grinning, his pencil poised above the paper.

I smiled back because I couldn’t resist his charm, but soon turned serious.

“I’d like us to start donating some time to suicide lines,” I said. “We both know what it’s like to be at rock bottom and to recover from it. I think it’s important to share that hope with people who aren’t aware that they can have it, too.”

Nate stared at me before seizing my chair and dragging it closer to him. He put his hands on either side of my face and kissed me, deeply, simply, and lovingly. It reached to my very soul and left me breathless.

“You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met in my entire life,” he said.

“I just want to make it meaningful,” I said. “I want to do real, tangible things for people that will truly make a difference in their lives. I’ve been there. I needed people to do that for me and it never happened.” I paused, trying not to tear up. “Until I met you, of course.”

Nate hugged me to his body. We didn’t say a word. We didn’t have to.

Suddenly, something inside me clicked. I remembered talking to Brenda just before I’d been slapped with my diagnosis. Something she’d said. I’d been talking about her having everything figured out. She said that one day I’d understand, too.

I opened my eyes and looked at Nate. This was where I was meant to be. Through everything, every sorrow I’d endured, this was where I was supposed to end up. I didn’t have to have everything figured out. All I had to do was live in this moment and hope for the best. It made life a lot more exciting.

Cocoa slipped her nightclub uniform on its hanger, making sure it hung smoothly so it wouldn't wrinkle before the next shift. Another day, another dollar.

She sighed, wrapping the kimono tighter around her body and looked in the mirror. All the night's makeup had been washed away, leaving her face bare and vulnerable. Cocoa was starting to believe that her makeup was her war paint. With it on, she was a different person--someone capable and strong. Someone who could handle anything Mama's nightclub could toss at her. Without it, she was just Cocoa.

The room was lonesome tonight. Usually Cocoa felt lucky to be by herself. It was so hard to have privacy at Mama's with all the girls running up and down the hall and camping out in one another's rooms for movies and gossip. Tonight, though, Cocoa wished for someone to talk to.

She settled on the bed, turning the TV on for background noise even though at this hour, all that was on was one infomercial after another. She knew them all by heart. "But wait! Call right now and we'll double your order. That's right!"

Cocoa shuffled the envelopes in her lap. Her cell phone bill was among the pieces of mail, as was a note from her grandmother. It was probably asking for more money. Cocoa was always willing to help, but she sometimes wished some of her other cousins would step up and help the woman. She had raised them, after all.

Another envelope caught Cocoa's eye. It was handwritten in a cursive script she didn't recognize. The return address was in East Village. She didn't know anyone there, did she? Curious, she ripped open the envelope and unfolded the sheets of paper within. Flipping to the last page, Cocoa was equal parts stunned and delighted to see "Jasmine" scrawled at the bottom.

A rush of memories careened around her--taking Jasmine under her wing per Mama's instructions, giving the girl an education in everything she had to do to succeed in the nightclub, trying to console her as she spiraled further and further into depression. Then that heart-rending moment when Cocoa went to the room to care for Jasmine and found only the bloody sheets on the bed.

There hadn't been many days that Cocoa hadn't thought about what had happened to her former roommate. She eagerly turned back to the first page of writing.

"
Dear Cocoa
," it read. "
I want to start off by saying how sorry I was to leave the nightclub the way I did. Tracy messed me up so bad and I was sure my only option was to escape. It wasn't fair to you to leave without saying goodbye or thank you for all that you did for me at the nightclub.

"I know that you had my best interests in mind and were always looking out for me. You're a real friend. The truth is that I was never really cut out for the life that you're leading. I just wasn't going to survive.

"Well, as this letter proves, I am surviving. In fact, I'm doing more than surviving. The year after I left Mama's was maybe the hardest year of my life. Long story short, I'm HIV positive
."

Cocoa's hand fluttered at her throat, her heart pounding. Poor, poor Jasmine. What a terrible nightmare. How could that have happened? How was she dealing with it? Cocoa picked up the narrative hungrily.

"
HIV isn't a death sentence. I have to be careful, of course, and always take my medicine on time. But I'll die a happy old woman, which is exactly how I want to go.

"I met this amazing guy, Nate King. He's a writer--and my boyfriend--and he's been so good for me, Cocoa. He's the only reason I'm doing as well as I am. I never knew love could be like this. I never had any reason to believe in it.

"Now, I'm focusing on giving back to the community. When I turned up at Mama's, I was desperately in need of help. When I left there, I was still desperately in need. I know that I can do more for people in similar situations as mine, and that's what I'm doing. I'm also CEO of a cancer research foundation, an issue that's pretty close to my heart.

"The reason I'm writing is because I never stopped thinking about you and everything you did for me. You deserve to know that through your intervention and that of others, I'm doing better than I ever have before. I don't know what would've happened to me without you. Thank you so much."

Cocoa wiped a tear from her eye before laughing at the next line.

"And, if you ever want to part with any of that money you're making, I know a couple of good charities that would benefit. Let me know.

"I miss you and hope you're doing well. You're good at what you do now, but I know you'd be good at anything. You have such a kind, giving nature. Don't ever feel like you're stuck in a situation you don't want to be in. Just keep moving forward.

"That's how I got out.

"You stay in my thoughts. Love, Jasmine."

Cocoa blinked a couple of times, surprised at how touched was. She never knew that Jasmine felt like that about her. It was also downright shocking that Jasmine had opened herself up to love after all that had happened to her.

Jasmine had found love--and success--outside the walls of Mama's nightclub. It almost didn't seem possible. Her former roommate had been beaten down, stomped on even, but now it sounded like she was riding high. It made Cocoa think that maybe anyone could do anything.

She flipped the TV off again and got up, walking back to the mirror. She stared at herself for several long minutes, studying her naked face. Maybe she didn't need all that war paint to face the world. Maybe she could even take on something entirely different. Something completely new.

Jasmine said anyone could do anything. It certainly made a girl think.

-
        
END of STRONGER –